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I see a lot of South American and Mexican students coming to even relatively poorer parts of Europe (e.g., ex-Communist countries) to do PhDs, but the opposite is not true.

Is it a good idea to do PhDs in Latin American countries?

user366312
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  • Compare the relative size of the economies and GDP. – Jon Custer May 02 '23 at 21:34
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    In my opinion, Latin American academia is not as good as its European counterpart. I'm not writing an answer because I think your question lacks more context and is a bit opinion based, but consider that a lot of Latin America countries gained independence from European countries just a few hundred years ago (for example, Mexico became "independent" in 1824, not so long ago!). While European scientists were making scientific breakthroughs, the majority of the Latino population could not even read. – Amelian May 02 '23 at 22:02
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    It seems to me like this question is asking for some basic world history education; I don't know that it's the best fit for Academia.SE. – Bryan Krause May 02 '23 at 22:03
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    @Amelian - note that the US became independent a scant 41 years before Mexico. – Jon Custer May 02 '23 at 22:06
  • https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/107964/is-obtaining-a-phd-from-an-asian-country-really-a-career-suicide You might be interested – Allure May 03 '23 at 04:02
  • As long as you do not mind learning Brazilian Portuguese, IMPA is a fantastic place for doing math, better than any math department in Eastern Europe. – Moishe Kohan May 03 '23 at 14:02
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    @Amelian no offense, but consider some countries (for example Brazil) gained independence but the ruling class was still european (i.e. belonging to the same that were revolting in Europe against kingdoms). There have been more recent occurences in the 20th century in South America that destroyed the "humus" of public fundings behind every decent research&universities (yes, even in the for-profit corporate America research would not be so great without the funding cornesrstones of DoE and DoD , departments of Energy/Defense). – EarlGrey May 03 '23 at 14:08
  • @EarlGrey yes, I get what you say. I was pointing out that while the major cities of the European continent were intellectually growing, native American cultures were being destroyed and oppressed. And, as you point out, even after those countries became independent, the control was still not in their hands. So it always surprise me when people wonders why EU countries are stronger than Latin America countries. – Amelian May 03 '23 at 20:30

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This of course will depend.

One of my fellow Jesuits got his Ph.D. in (Latin-American) history in Mexico at the UNAM and that was a great place for him. Also, at commencement, he got to wear the coolest academic garb of all of us.

I spend five years teaching in Latin America. The biggest research problem is isolation. Going to a conference just costs almost 1000 dollars more, people are not likely to visit, and you might not have anyone to talk to at the professor level. In some countries, there is a very strong academic tradition that sometimes holds on to facets of academic life that nobody else is anymore. For example, Brazilians rejected my conference paper because it did not have the Sections in a certain order. This being said, there has been much more exchange and many universities have many departments that are thoroughly modernized. You still sometimes have to deal with unjustified academic minority complexes.

Also, your Ph.D. co-students might be different. In the Southern Cone (Ar-Ur-Ch) at least, students work full-time in a company, the Ph.D. in Computer Science is not valued in industry outside a few research labs, and the main reason to get a Ph.D. is to be promoted at the teaching job they already got. This makes it hard on a department / advisor to obtain a high level of academic accomplishment.

The political maturity of Latin American countries also matters. Chile is in general progressive and modern, Uruguay is pre-occupied with not being Argentina, and Argentina is still suffering from Peronism and wild economic turns.

For a Latin-American, it might be good to get a Ph.D. from outside the country to break the isolation. But you can get a very good education in Latin America and you can do outstanding research there. Unfortunately, if you do the latter, you are being recruited for more attractive positions in the US and Europe.

This is my personal take on it. Others can and will disagree or have very different experiences. Latin America is a great continent of great variety and size.

Thomas Schwarz
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